What are the prospects of B2B electronic commerce when production is carried out by a number of small firms specialized in single production phases? Prato, Italy, is home to thousands of textile firms as well as the locus of an early and innovative experience of a local Internet in the...

This article presents a model of the structure of the information flows that underlie the creation of production chains between thousands of small textile firms located in Prato, central Italy. Contrary to most textile industry of western Europe and north America, Prato did not die out once...

This article presents an agent-based model of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialise in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical model that reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In their turn,...

Agent-based models, an instance of the wider class of connectionist models, allow bottom-up simulations of organizations constituted byu a large number of interacting parts. Thus, geogrfaphical clusters of competing or collaborating firms constitute an obvious field of application. This...

This article provides a cognitive foundation of the parameters that regulate a model of the learning curve. Organizational learning and its actual occurrence are linked to the number of available categories and to the amount of information to be processed.

This article presents a formalization of knowledge based on a connectionist model of a firm's structure. Transaction costs are not ignored, but integrated with the knowledge-based approach. A numerical example on the canonical comparison of "Japanese" versus "American" organizational structures...

Some empirical investigations are pointing to the fact that high-tech firms are subject to credit rationing to a higher extent than the average. This excess of credit rationing may not be due to information asymmetries, but rather to the inability of credit institutions to screen projects in...

type="main" xml:lang="es" <title type="main">Resumen</title> <p>Este artículo presenta un modelo basado en agentes en un distrito textil italiano donde miles de pequeñas empresas se especializan en ciertas fases de la producción de tejidos. Se reconstruye la red de comunicación entre empresas con respecto a cómo...</p>